Monday, 14 March 2016

Gwenan Haines will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

I’ve got a confession to make. When it comes to bad habits,
I’ve got plenty to choose from: procrastinating, eating too much ice cream,
beating myself up about rejections and many others. Not too surprisingly, I’d
give up most of my bad habits in a heartbeat and substitute an equal number of
good ones: going to the gym more often, (finally) learning to cook and hitting
my word count every day. But there is one bad habit I have no intention of
giving up. As in ever. Can you guess what it is?

If you know me, this question is an easy one. Because there
is one habit I’ve had since college and, unlike most of my other bad habits,
it’s one that has helped me through many rough nights and dreary mornings. Yes,
the bad habit I won’t ever give up is drinking coffee. When I was in high
school, my mom never let me drink the stuff but I still remember the night I
first understood its allure. It was during finals week in college and the
campus had set up places where you could get coffee for free. I had a long
night of studying ahead of me and my boyfriend persuaded me to try a cup. I
never looked back.

There are more than a few things that have got me hooked on
java. The aroma. The dozens of flavors (yes, I confess to being a pumpkin spice
person). The multiplicity of fancy coffee drinks just waiting to be sampled.
And of course the taste. Unlike wine and beer, which was an acquired taste,
I’ve loved coffee from the first drop. I should also divulge here that I’m not
just a dabbler when it comes to caffeine. I drink at least three cups a day,
every day, and have done so for years. Sure, I’ve cut down from time to time.
Switched to Earl Grey or—gasp—herbal tea. Yet I always end up back where I
started: in my kitchen, brewing up another pot of java.

But none of the things listed above are the real reason why
I’ll never give up my coffee habit. The biggest reason is that I love the jolt
of energy I get after drinking a cup first thing in the morning. Or, okay, late
at night when my motivation’s flagging. I know coffee isn’t exactly responsible
for the stories, novels and poems I write, but it doesn’t hurt either. So I
definitely won’t be trading in my Keurig any time soon—and I hope I’ll have
some new writing to show for it over the next few years.

For
three years Laura Drake has watched Senator Pete Worthington promote a series
of gorgeous women while she sits in a forgotten corner answering constituent
letters on an outdated computer. When Worthington asks her to find an elusive
file one Friday night he sets off a series of events that brands her as a
killer and puts her life in jeopardy. The path she sets out on forces her to
confront not only the nature of evil but the ghosts from her past that have
never been set to rest.FBI Agent Dalton Ross transferred from Chicago to
Washington to escape his own ghosts. When his investigation leads him to Laura
he's torn between his desire to keep her safe and the need to protect his own
heart. As the mystery that surrounds them deepens, Laura and Dalton race to
save themselves and the nation from someone willing to sacrifice anything to
protect a secret.

Excerpt:

Dalton checked his gun and opened the driver’s side door as
quietly as possible. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

She opened her door too. “You leave me here, I’m gone when
you get back.” She flashed an object in front of his face. “And I’ve got the
key.”

“Do you have a death wish or something?” How had she managed
to get hold of the key? He was sure he’d put it in his wallet, which was tucked
away in the glove compartment. He would have remembered it if she’d opened it.
“I thought you said you were dull.”

“I am.” She deposited the key down the front of her dress.
“But I’m kinda getting the hang of this adventure thing.” A grin tugged at the
corner of his mouth, but he suppressed it. She was charming, no doubt about
that. And damn mysterious, too. As she stood there smiling with cat-like
satisfaction, he had to resist the urge to take her in his arms and kiss her.
Just the idea of pressing his lips to hers was making him hard. The trouble was
Laura had no idea what she was up against. She thought of all this as an
exciting change from her ordinary life. But this was real life, and real life
was full of people whose sole purpose was to inflict as much pain as they
possibly could. It was all too easy to go about one’s business without ever
seeing the dark side of things—he’d done it for years, and in a way, he wished
he could go back to being that twenty-year-old kid who signed up for an
interview with the FBI mostly to impress his buddies. But after more than a
decade spent hunting killers he knew that like all fairy-tales, the
happily-ever-after of suburbia had its monsters.

In real life, people died.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

I live in an
old Cape house with my daughter, too many books, and a red-and-white Siberian
husky born on Halloween. After working in Washington, D.C. for several years
and traveling to Russia, Europe and Pakistan, I moved back to New England. I’m
the author of the romantic suspense novel Vertigo, which is available as an
E-book from Amazon Encore and in paperback from Wild Rose Press. Collateral
Risk, the follow-up novel to Collateral Damage (which features Dalton’s boss
Nick Doyle and scientist Mia Lindgren), is forthcoming from Wild Rose Press.
When I’m not working on fiction, I write poetry, teach literature and am still
trying to learn how to cook.